Lit Hub Daily: November 30, 2018

• From WS Merwin to the effects of socialism on your sex life, the Lit Hub staff’s favorite stories from November. | Lit Hub
• A close reading of The Talented Mr. Ripley: Emily Temple on what just might be a creepy coming-of-age novel. | Lit Hub
• “Poetry is part of the mechanics of living.” An interview with hip-hop artist turned novelist Gaël Faye. | Lit Hub
• Jay McInerney recommends eight full-bodied novels for the literate oenophile. | Lit Hub
• “Is it morally defensible to own a Charles Manson dish towel?” True crime expert Tori Telfer answers this question, and many others, in her new true crime advice column. | CrimeReads
• A murderous sibling, a guide to insomnia, and a quest for the hangover cure all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
• A library on the U.S.-Canada border has been a reunion point for separated Iranian families. | Reuters
• “The inherent suffering of her birth”: How women carved spaces for themselves in Zen Buddhist literary traditions. | Ploughshares
• “Complete strangers would say to me, ‘You’re that girl who walks and reads.’” Read a profile of Man Booker Prize winner Anna Burns. | The New York Times
• “For Boyle, spontaneity is not a device; it is the very premise of her project.” On Megan Boyle’s Liveblog and the limits of autofiction. | The New Yorker
• A data scientist analyzed the sales patterns of New York Times best-sellers to “crack the code” of landing a spot on the list (tl;dr: be James Patterson). | MarketWatch
• “When you get to a place where you think, ‘Oh I’m so fabulous, I did this so well,’ you’re screwed.” An interview with Danielle Steele in the aftermath of her 174th book. | Refinery29
• “My sales suggest that people actually like me being out of fucks”: A profile of acclaimed fantasy writer N.K. Jemisin. | GQ

Also on Lit Hub: Lit Hub Recommends • Read “Too Much a Child,” a story from Laura Adamczyk’s collection Hardly Children